How are two-year U.S. colleges addressing student alcohol use and related problems?

A fair amount of attention and research has been dedicated to addressing alcohol use and related problems among students at four-year colleges; however, little attention has been given to alcohol-related issues among students at two-year technical/community colleges. To investigate the alcohol services and policies in place at two-year colleges, we conducted an online survey of campus administrators at a representative sample of 201 U.S. two-year colleges. We specifically assessed the degree to which alcohol education, screening, intervention, and treatment services are offered and whether various alcohol prevention policies are implemented on these campuses. We found that most of the schools in our sample do not require alcohol education programs for their students and the most common type of education program offered is aimed at violators of alcohol regulations. Less than a quarter (24%) of the schools reported having a formal alcohol screening system to identify potential alcohol-related problems among students, and the screening that is done primarily takes place when students encounter legal problems or are involved in incidents with campus police/security. Approximately 10% of schools offer alcohol intervention and treatment services, with cost being the most common barrier to offering these programs. The majority of schools prohibit alcohol use for everyone on campus, and of the 67% that have a campus newspaper, almost all prohibit alcoholic beverage and bar/club advertising in the paper. Additional results, including comparisons across different types of schools and comparisons between two-year and four-year schools, and recommendations for future research and interventions will be discussed.